Bulgaria's planned first ?2 commemorative coin, dedicated to the Bulgarian alphabet, has been blocked after an objection from an unidentified EU member state, according to documents circulating within the EU Council. The coin, originally scheduled for release in the second half of 2026 with a planned circulation of one million pieces, cannot proceed in its current form without full approval from EU institutions.
The decision emerged after Bulgaria submitted the design on May 19, 2026, under Council document No. 9435/26. A follow-up document dated May 29, 2026, confirmed that one eurozone country had formally objected, although its identity was redacted in the publicly available version as ?DELETED.? No official EU publication has disclosed which state raised the objection or the reasoning behind it.
?In the publicly available document, the name has been redacted, and there is currently no Council text revealing the country,? said Tsveta Kirilova from the ?Azbukari? association, which first highlighted the case.
The proposed design features Cyrillic letters alongside the inscription ?BULGARIAN ALPHABET? (??????????? ??????) intended to mark the status of Cyrillic as the third official script of the European Union, alongside Latin and Greek. The design was created by artists Svetlin Balezdrov and Stoyan Derchev.
Kirilova noted that despite the procedural objection, numismatic catalogues and official banking plans have continued to list the coin as scheduled, suggesting the issue may not be fully closed or could still be resolved administratively.
She also stressed that online claims identifying a specific country remain unverified, adding that no official source has confirmed responsibility. ?All claims circulating on social media are not supported by any official document,? she said, while noting that speculation has pointed to countries including Austria, Greece, Croatia, and the Czech Republic, though none has been confirmed.
The episode has drawn comparisons with a 2019 case in which Italy's proposed ?2 commemorative coin was halted after objections from Greece and Germany over historical concerns linked to the Alpine Association.
